"“Many of the 300 reviews he bought through GettingBookReviews were highly favorable, although it’s impossible to say whether this was because the reviewers genuinely liked the books, or because of their well-developed tendency toward approval, or some combination of the two.”

Mr. Locke is unwilling to say that paying for reviews made a big difference. “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful,” he said. “But it’s a lot easier to buy them than cultivating an audience.”

The New York Times ran an article regarding review mills, and in it we discovered that Mr. Locke spent thousands of dollars buying reviews. Not only did he buy reviews, but he actively sought to game the Amazon review system by asking the paid reviews to buy a copy of the book (for reimbursement) on Amazon so that the review would show up as a verified purchases to increase their perceived legitimacy."